Pentagon Seemingly Caused a Medevac Plane to Crash, Killing Everyone Onboard

Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size. The Pentagon appears to have caused a plane crash that killed four people in New Mexico in May that happened while the military was conducting a GPS jamming test a hundred miles away, new reporting finds. On May 13, a medevac flight took off from Roswell shortly before midnight to pick up a patient in Ruidoso, as Wired reported recently. It was a dark night and the area is sparsely populated, and thus lacking ground-based lighting that pilots could rely on for navigation. So the pilots contacted the Albuquerque air traffic control center in order to fly instruments-only, referring to the common practice of relying on the plane’s instruments rather than using visual cues, according to the Wired account and the summary of the incident from the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) preliminary report. But, shortly after midnight, the pilots reported losing their GPS, rendering the controls they needed for guidance useless. They would need the air traffic controllers to guide them to where they needed to go. At the same time, however, three other aircraft in the area also lost their GPS and needed attention from controllers. Disoriented and lacking sufficient guidance, the pilots on the medevac flight requested to land at a nearby runway that they could see. What they didn’t see, until it was too late, was that there was a mountain standing in their route, and the pilots crashed into the side of it. Everyone on board — two pilots and two nurses — died. The crash sparked a wildfire, known as the Seven Cabins fire, that ultimately burned over 31,000 acres. Around this time, an Air Force unit was holding an annual event called NAVFEST in which electronic warfare units gather to test things like GPS jamming, which is increasingly used to combat drones in modern warfare. The NTSB notes the military’s jamming exercises in its preliminary findings on the crash, and notes that the military informed pilots of the demonstrations ahead of time. The agency also finds that air traffic controllers requested that the military pause its disruptions at a couple of points as they were assisting the medevac flight. The incident appears to be the first known incident of a fatal crash in relation to the U.S. military’s GPS jamming exercises. The crash adds to scrutiny over the seemingly high number of unusual flight-related incidents under the second Trump administration. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was recently criticized for endorsing low-altitude flyovers by military jets after videos showed an incident in Florida in which a Blue Angels aircraft flew extremely closely over a crowd of people. There were no reported injuries, but the video and Hegseth’s fervor sparked concerns that future flights may not be so lucky. Just on Wednesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said that it is investigating an incident in which a commercial jet was allowed to take off from Washington National Airport on Tuesday at the same time as President Donald Trump’s helicopter, Marine One. Though no contact occurred, it highlighted issues in communication between military and civilian air traffic controllers. That incident hearkens to a crash in January 2025, as Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” were slashing air safety jobs and regulations, when a military helicopter and an American Airlines flight collided as the latter aircraft was making a landing at Washington National. The collision killed 67 people and was the deadliest plane crash in the U.S. in over 20 years. Meanwhile, earlier this summer, a pilot flying into Washington National filed a safety complaint when he said that the Trump administration’s UFC stage, on the White House lawn for Trump’s 80th birthday, was causing blinding lights that made it hazardous to fly. Important Message: Please Read For 25 years, Truthout has survived by publishing impactful investigative journalism and analysis; distributing full editions 365 days a year; and building a community of readers who support us with small, hard-earned donations. Eighty percent of our $3 million yearly budget comes from small donors alone. Of those, 8,000 readers support us with monthly donations. Back in 2018, when Facebook decided to suppress the circulation of posts made by organizations, thereby cutting readers off from seeing many articles shared by the news organizations they had intentionally decided to follow, Truthout’s total traffic declined by 40 percent, as nearly all of our traffic from that platform disappeared. 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